Why a universal population‐level approach to the prevention of child abuse is essential

This paper argues for the importance of adopting a population‐level approach to promote more effective parenting and to reduce the risk of child maltreatment. Family‐based interventions based on social learning principles have been shown to make a useful contribution in the treatment of child maltreatment. However, typically such programmes have been used to treat parents who have already become involved in the child protection system. We argue that the creation of community‐wide support structures to support positive parenting is needed to reduce the prevalence of child maltreatment. Such an approach requires several criteria to be met. These include having knowledge about the prevalence rates for the targeted child outcomes sought, knowledge about the prevalence of various parenting and family risk factors, evidence that changing family risk factors reduces the prevalence of targeted problems, having culturally appropriate, cost‐effective, evidence‐based interventions available and making these widely accessible. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding the economic fallacies of the intergenerational debate

This paper demonstrates that Federal spending is not inherently financially constrained and does not have to be facilitated via prior taxation or debt‐issuance. It also refutes the claim that budget deficits result in higher interest rates in the future, with lower levels of capital formation and economic growth as a consequence. These misconceptions together lead to the nonsensical claim that by running surpluses now the Government will be better able (because it has ‘more funds stored away‘) to cope with future spending demands. The paper thus challenges the conventional view, such as that espoused in the 2002 Australian Treasury Intergenerational Report, that the ageing population will place unsustainable demands on the Federal budget.     

The Triple P‐Positive Parenting Programme: a universal population‐level approach to the prevention of child abuse

The Triple P‐Positive Parenting Programme is described as an example of an evidence‐based universal parenting initiative that provides a tiered continuum of interventions of increasing strength but narrowing reach in an effort to make parenting programmes more accessible to parents. Interventions within the system range from the use of the media and brief messages to intensive family interventions for parents where parenting problems are complicated by multiple additional sources of family adversity. Several issues concerning the role of training and organizational factors that influence the successful uptake and implementation of the programme are discussed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Book Reviews

This article does not have an abstract     

Alcohol Advertising in College Newspapers: A 7-Year Follow-up

Abstract

The authors report on the frequency and nature of alcohol advertisements in a representative sample of college newspapers from 1984/85 and compare these with results of a similar study conducted 7 years earlier, in 1977/78. On average, nearly 24 column inches of space per issùe were devoted to national alcohol advertisements in 1984/85. This represents a significant decrease from an earlier period. The space devoted to national alcohol advertisements, however, still far exceeded that for comparison products (books, soft drinks). Local alcohol advertisements averaged 20 column inches per issue and were somewhat more frequent than in the previous study. The content of the advertisements differed markedly from the messages presented 7 years earlier. Although national alcohol advertisements in 1977/78 frequently ridiculed education and study, none did so in 1984/85, when appeals were to taste and product quality instead. Fantasy themes also were relatively common. Very few national alcohol advertisements featured athletes or group drinking. Sponsorship of campus activities by the alcohol industry, however, had increased since the earlier study. In contrast to national advertisements, many local advertisements consisted of inducements to drink through special offers and happy hours. Some encouraged irresponsible and heavy drinking. Interestingly, alcohol advertisements were just as frequent in papers from states with higher minimum drinking ages and were more frequent in papers from campuses with higher proportions of women students.     

Honesty and method

A client must rely on the integrity of the professional money manager through the stages of the investment process: research, recommendation of specific securities, selection of investments appropriate to the investor, trading of the securities, and reporting of how successful the decisions have been. Throughout this process, the investment manager may be confronted with conflicts of interest. The Association for Investment Management and Research (AIMR) is a nonprofit association of money managers that has developed a code of ethics and standards of professional conduct. Its code contains governing principles; its standards provide the minimum rules of conduct. The AIMR Standards work on the assumption that investors will be adequately protected if the appropriate processes are in place and they provide full disclosure. Since the late 1980s, AIMR has been leading an industry effort to include in the Standards guidelines for presenting a money manager's historical performance.     

Kenya Enters the Fertility Transition

Contraceptive prevalence is rising and fertility is falling in Kenya, and the speed with which these changes are occurring suggests that Kenya has passed a turning point and entered a transition. In this paper the author explores these recent trends with data from the 1989 Kenya Demographic Health Survey and several other small-scale surveys and qualitative research studies. Underlying the changed contraceptive – fertility behaviour, there appears to have been a major shift in attitudes regarding desired family size. In the second part of the paper the earlier almost universally pessimistic predictions regarding fertility in Kenya, which now appear to have been wrong are considered. Since Kenya has emerged as a bellwether among sub-saharan African states, these earlier predictions are re-examined with a view to learning from their mistakes. It is concluded that incorrect theoretical paradigms and assumptions led to the erroneous results, rather more than incorrect data, or analysis.     

The Problem of Alcohol Advertisements in College Newspapers

Abstract

In a sample of college newspapers, alcohol advertisements made up approximately one-half of all national advertising. Most of these were for beer. In addition, most of the papers also carried local “on sale” alcohol ads. Ads for soft drinks and for books were far less prominent in the sample. Numerous beer ads contained a philosophy inimical to the aims of college education. Study, learning, science, campus organizations, graduation, and even education itself were ridiculed, and beer drinking was substituted for them. These appeals were considered in relation to studies of drinking problems on campus and peer pressures on students to join in the drinking. Campus efforts toward alcohol education were reviewed and outstanding programs singled out. It was suggested that students, faculty, and staff discuss the problem and seek some resolution.     

Properties of simultaneous confidence intervals for multinomial proportions

Inversion of Pearson's chi-square statistic yields a confidence ellipsoid that can be used for simultaneous inference concerning multinomial proportions. Because the ellipsoid is difficult to interpret, methods of simultaneous confidence interval construction have been proposed by Quesenberry and hurst,goodman,fitzpatrick and scott and sison and glaz . Based on simulation results, we discuss the performance of these methods in terms of empirical coverage probabilities and enclosed volume. None of the methods is uniformly better than all others, but the Goodman intervals control the empirical coverage probability with smaller volume than other methods when the sample size supports the large sample theory. If the expected cell counts are small and nearly equal across cells, we recommend the sison and glaz intervals.